Declaration of Interdependence

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Declaration of Interdependence

According to eco-architect Bill McDonough, failure to protect the environment is intergenerational tyranny, and the key to saving the planet isn't more regulations, but better design.

In choosing to stake his professional future on an issue as potentially tedious as "the environment," architect and designer William McDonough has become a master of the buzzword. He frequently challenges American businesses to "use current solar income" and remember that "waste equals food" while he champions the coming of the Next Industrial Revolution and outlines his eco-manifesto, which he calls the Declarations of Interdependence.

McDonough, the University of Virginia's dean of architecture, recently launched the Institute for Sustainable Design. Last year, DesignTex Inc. released a McDonough-designed line of fabrics made with biodegradable fibers and reengineered chemical processes. "They are so safe," he says, "you can eat them."

Wired: Working at an institution founded by Thomas Jefferson, what sort of mantle is passed on to you?

McDonough: I have the same design assignment he did: How are we meant to pursue life, liberty, and happiness free from remote tyranny? In my case, I am calling for the Declarations of Interdependence, but I'm focusing on the same issues. Perhaps now the remote tyranny is not George III - but it's an intergenerational remote tyranny. We're actually tyrannizing future generations.

Intergenerational tyranny?

The question no longer is what are we going to leave behind for our children, but what are we not leaving behind? Like trout. If we permanently destroy genetic information and don't leave that as a resource, and we persistently toxify the planet, what we have left is a poisoned place, devoid of valuable information.

How does the Next Industrial Revolution change things?

It allows us to dematerialize - we start to think more in terms of information and less in terms of stuff.

What will the Institute for Sustainable Design do to address this?

It will "render things visible." We'll have regional planning data available where we can show what it means to allow the present course of activity to play itself out, so people can come see what it looks like. They can see, for example, what the effect of sprawl will be if they don't do anything. So we can project a tragedy.If what we are doing now is a strategy, it's a strategy of tragedy. A strategy of hope would require a strategy of change. And therefore we have to be willing to change immediately.

What does that require?

It's a way of looking at the world. The business community has adopted something called eco-efficiency, the idea that we can reduce our toxic conditions but we discern our energy consumption as separate. From my perspective, eco-efficiency is a derelict notion. It essentially says that you wake up in the morning feeling really guilty, and then you say, "Well how can I feel better by being less bad today?" All you've done is stretched out the agony. You haven't changed what you're doing. The question is would you rather die by slow torture, or would you rather be shot?So instead of eco-efficiency, we said: What would a sustainable agenda look like? You have to project what "100 percent sustainable" looks like in order to measure your progress. It makes you become a designer.

Unlike many defenders of the environment, you avoid the term "recycling" in favor of "downcycling." What do you mean?

We're actually losing the quality of the materials. As long as you keep converting carpets and milk jugs into park benches, you're not recycling - you're downcycling the quality of the petrochemical. It's losing quality. You can never get it back to being the jug, because it's being contaminated with all sorts of other things.

So current recycling practices are inadequate?

More than inadequate. They're probably dangerous. When I see a milk bottle becoming fabric on your back and realize that it's full of anti-oxidants, UV stabilizers, and anti-ammodium residues from catalytic reactions and plasticizers, I think, Wait a minute. That was never designed to be next to human skin.The largest carpet maker in the world has adopted our principle of cradle-to-cradle design. You can lease their carpet and they'll take it back as a technical nutrient. They render it back into carpet - forever. It doesn't get downcycled.

Bureaucracies are infamous for being unresponsive. Yet you've worked for huge companies like The Gap, Wal-Mart, and Herman Miller. How do you manage to penetrate the corporate culture?

I work only with the chairman of the board, and after explaining what we do, I've never had anybody come back and ask me to please give it to them energy- inefficient and toxic. We can show that the economics of buildings are irrelevant next to the economics of employees.

How would that manifest itself in a corporation?

Productivity. Just enjoyment - and also avoiding liability. It's not a small issue. We always make our offices as much like the outdoors as possible, so you feel refreshed at the end of the day. Then you go home to your cave and family and hunker down.

So that people are saying, "I can't wait to go back to work"?

Our argument, when we work with corporate leaders, is very clear. How many people do you think get up in the morning and can't wait to get to their gray rectangle under that neutral fluorescent light? And the air is bad on top of that.

Would Jefferson have sympathized with your agenda?

Mr. Jefferson understood very thoroughly what this idea of intergenerational responsibility was all about. In 1789, in a letter to James Madison, he said, in effect, The earth belongs to the living. No man may by natural right oblige the lands he owns or occupies to debts greater than those that may be paid during his own lifetime, because if he could, then the world would belong to the dead and not to the living.